This blog post is going to be the start of another series of blog posts called “Random baking-related things to do in quarantine” like the other one I started a few weeks ago called “What I’ve been baking recently.” This is officially Part 1, and it is going to be about something great that my family has done a few times throughout this boring time: having our own vegan baking competitions at home.

I have watched a lot of baking shows, and have always wanted to be on one, but there are not very many vegan baking shows out there, and it is quarantine, so there are a few problems with doing that. The good thing is that because of those shows, me and my family have really wanted to do our own competitions at home, so this blog post is going to be about how we have done that to hopefully inspire you to do the same thing.

The rules for our family’s competition are pretty simple, and you can feel free to change whatever you want to make it more fun for you and your family. The first time we did this competition, we had friends over, and so we had two judges, one host, and three contestants, but the second time we didn’t have our host or a second judge, and it worked great too.

The first thing we did was have the judge(s) invent some kind of theme (the first time the theme was “filled cupcakes,” and the second time, it was “fancy”). After that, the contestants prepared their own recipes or found recipes from cookbooks that they thought would fit the theme, without telling the the judge(s) anything about what they were making.

For the competition, all of the contestants share the kitchen and have a time limit that doesn’t give everyone too much pressure but just makes it fun. While the people bake, the judge(s) go somewhere where they don’t know what’s happening, and then they come when the time is up or when everyone finishes. Then, the judge does a blind taste test of everyone’s bakes and picks a winner.

Here are some of the bakes that me and my family have made at our baking competitions!

These are our filled cupcakes that we made on our first competition. My dad made the top left, which were orange cream and sesame cupcakes, mine (in the middle) were lemon coconut cupcakes with strawberry filling (this won and it was so good!). The other one is my mom’s, on the bottom left, and it was a peanut butter chocolate cupcake!

These are the most recent three bakes that we made at our latest family baking competition, with the theme this time being fancy. On the left is my mom’s chocolate, orange, and almond olive oil cake from Vegan Chocolate by Fran Costigan (this won, it was amazing!!). The one in the middle is mine, and it is a chocolate raspberry pie with vegan whipped cream and raspberry sauce on top, and the one on the right is an apple rosemary crisp that my dad made.

Thanks for reading, and I hope that this has inspired you to do something like this with your family!